the prince of peace

[All quotes and images taken from Is Barack Obama the Messiah?]

What They Say

Barack Obama dot com: "Just follow Barack's lead and be honest with them. You don't need to debate policy or discuss the day's headlines.

Donna Brazile: "Barack Obama is a metaphysical force in American politics."

***

Chris Matthews: "I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often. No, seriously. It's a dramatic event. He speaks about America in a way that has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with the feeling we have about our country. And that is an objective assessment."

"I’ve been following politics since I was about 5,” said Mr. Matthews. “I’ve never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament. This is surprising."

***

Ezra Klein: "Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. ...Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence..."

***

Ken Burns: "As Abraham Lincoln experienced in his time, this nation is again at a crossroads. We again need a president who is above all authentic, who points us confidently toward that future, a leader with real character, like Obama, who calls upon each and every one of us to heed what his predecessor from Illinois called "the better angels of our nature" and not our basest fears. I am confident that Obama will be that kind of president. It is time for real change."

Gerald Campbel: "For his part, Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind. ... Unlike other candidates, Obama is an inspired leader. He is authentic and truthful. He radiates truth and goodness. He possesses charisma and exercises sound judgment."

***

Gary Hart: "He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians, and this makes him seem elusive to the conventional press and the traditional politicians. His instinct for the moment and the times is orders of magnitude more powerful than the experience claimed by others. ... In an age of great transformation, experience of the past is worthless because it is a barrier to the breakthrough gesture...

"Some see Barack Obama as the long awaited champion finally come to slay the awful dragon of race. And they are right. Some see him as a new start for the Democratic Party and national politics. And they are right. Some see him as the walking embodiment of internationalism, ready to restore an honorable and respected place for America in the world. And they are right.

"I see Barack Obama as a leader for this transcendent moment, the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century and to convert threat to great new opportunity."

Eve Konstantine: "Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings of who we are as a people, and as a country. We've surfaced him out of "the field" and charged him with the task of riding this wave on our behalf...

Obama has tapped into his own [Vibrational Intelligence]. He's listened to the unspoken, heard the unvoiced, and has responded to the yearning of our youth, our boomers, and the disenfranchised. He's our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence, of which we're all a part; and he's simultaneously speaking into that field."

***

Bill Rush: "Barack's going to bring the whole unit-, unit- the whole nation together - NO MORE Red States, NO MORE Blue States, ONE NATION. ... He hasn't been a senator for that long. But you know he's coming in here, he's doing it because he wants to, but also because he feels like he's CHOSEN to do this. You know our nation right now needs something, needs some CHANGE, needs something to SHAKE THINGS UP...

“I think that Obama, his election to the Senate, was divinely ordered,” Mr. Rush said, all other explanations failing. “I’m a preacher and a pastor; I know that that was God’s plan. Obama has certain qualities that -- I think he is being used for some purpose. I really believe that."

Toni Morrison (to Obama): "...in addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom.

When, I wondered, was the last time this country was guided by such a leader? Someone whose moral center was un-embargoed? Someone with courage instead of mere ambition? Someone who truly thinks of his country's citizens as "we," not "they"? Someone who understands what it will take to help America realize the virtues it fancies about itself, what it desperately needs to become in the world?

Our future is ripe, outrageously rich in its possibilities. Yet unleashing the glory of that future will require a difficult labor, and some may be so frightened of its birth they will refuse to abandon their nostalgia for the womb.

There have been a few prescient leaders in our past, but you are the man for this time.

George Packer: "At times, Obama almost seems to be trying to escape history, presenting himself as the conduit through which people’s yearnings for national transformation can be realized. [He] spoke for only twenty-five minutes and took no questions; he had figured out how to leave an audience at the peak of its emotion, craving more. As he was ending, I walked outside and found five hundred people standing on the sidewalk and the front steps of the opera house, listening to his last words in silence, as if news of victory in the Pacific were coming over the loudspeakers. Within minutes, I couldn’t recall a single thing that he had said, and the speech dissolved into pure feeling, which stayed with me for days."

***

Michael Sietzman: "We finally have a candidate in Barack Obama who uses the word 'We' while others use 'I.' He empowers us with words and the authentic emotion behind them and people are rushing into the tent to drink that magic water. Candor, inclusiveness, poetry, and inspiration. We don't only deserve those things, we long for them. We want to be led and we want to be lifted and anyone who doesn't understand that simply doesn't understand us.

***

Michelle Obama: "We have lost the understanding that in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another -- that we cannot measure the greatness of our society by the strongest and richest of us, but we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the ONLY person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation."

=====

Honestly, he gives me chills. -- Mural artist

***

"It's almost like the Messiah, you know?" said [Jan] Young.... "People really, really want change, and you feel it. You don't just hear it -- you feel something coming from him."

***

"Brenda Bladen was trying to explain why she liked Barack Obama so much—he was authentic, selfless, and inspirational. He was restoring her faith in politics. "I'm not comparing him to Jesus Christ but..." she said, before talking about the senator's humble beginnings..."

"He looked at me, and the look in his eyes was worth 1,000 words," said Mack, now a regional field organizer. Obama hugged her and whispered something in her ear – she was so thrilled she doesn't remember what it was.

***

"He's very charismatic. It was a 'you-had-to-be-there' kind of experience," said Lolita Breckenridge... "Not too much of the speech was new to me," she admitted. "But hearing him live..." she trailed off, shaking her head and grinning. ...

[Obama] did not flinch when women screamed as he was in mid-sentence, and even broke off once to answer a female's cry of "I love you Obama!" with a reassuring: "I love you back."

"Black and white, and the youth; they appeared in a state close to rapture watching Obama speak. Here and there one could see women crying and some men wiping away tears too. ...

"It's not so much by what he says but it's the way the crowds respond to his words. When 16,000 people, without prompting, start shouting some of his keynote phrases as he delivers them, you know something special is going on.

"The atmosphere at his events is such that one wonders if Obama is about to walk out with a basket with some loaves and fishes to feed the thousands. ...

"People rushed forward screaming hysterically. ... “It was HIM!” she yelled. “But,” I questioned, “how do you know? All the windows were darkened.” She replied, “I felt it.”

"...He gave the same speech he gives everywhere. I paid no attention to him but watched the crowd.

"Those faces. It was raw, naked, complete, worship, love, heart-whole passionate stunned and almost unbelieving but desperately wanting to believe him adoration."

***

Jody Klein of Centralia, Wash., about two hours-drive south of Seattle, was near tears as she recounted her Obama experience. At age 20, she'll vote in a presidential election for the first time.

"There's just this amazing excitement that's here," she said. "When he was talking about hope, it actually almost made me cry. Like it really made sense, like, for the first, like, whoa … how important a time this is for us. It was really exciting."

***

"The rest of us, we were in this huge crowd outside in the rain and he came out in the rain and talked to us," said Keze, her voice still raw from cheering. "I was 10 feet away from him, 10 feet away," she repeated another two times in awe.

"The only time I felt like that was when I saw Pope John Paul II."

What He Says

When Morgan Freeman comes over to greet Obama, the senator begins bowing down both hands in worship. "This guy was president before I was," says Obama, referring to Freeman's turn in Deep Impact and, clearly, getting a little ahead of his own bio. Next, a nod to Bruce Almighty: "This guy was God before I was." (Okay, more than a little ahead.) But Freeman is eating it up. Leaning in, he tells the senator to win it. "I will," Obama replies. "That's why I'm running."

***

“False hopes? There’s no such thing. This country was built on hope. We don’t need leaders to tell us what we can’t do—we need leaders to inspire us. Some are thinking about our constraints, and others are thinking about limitless possibility.”

***

"My job is to be so persuasive that if there's anybody left out there who is still not sure whether they will vote, or is still not clear who they will vote for, that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany ... and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama."

***

We are the hope of the future; the answer to the cynics who tell us ... that we cannot remake this world as it should be. Because we know what we have seen and what we believe -- that what began as a whisper has now swelled to a chorus that cannot be ignored; that will not be deterred; that will ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest. Yes. We. Can."

Nothing worthwhile in this country has ever happened unless somebody, somewhere is willing to hope. Somebody is willing to stand up.

Somebody who is willing to stand up when they are told "No you can't" and instead they say, "Yes we can."

That's how this country was founded. A group of patriots... "Yes we can." That's how slaves and abolitionists...

That's how the greatest generation...

That's how pioneers ... they said, "Yes we can."

That's how immigrants traveled ... "Yes we can."

That's how women ... how workers ... how young people...

That's what hope is. That's what hope is.

That's what hope is, Madison.

That moment when we... When we... Because cynicism is a sorry sort of wisdom. When we instead join arm in arm and decide ... block by block, precinct by precinct, county by county, state by state. That's what hope is.

There's a moment in the life ... when that spirit... if we are to make our mark on history. And this is our moment. This is our time.

What I Say

I'm just worried about what he's doing to all our fine young white women.




J

Bad B.O.

Obama is supposed to be hard to attack. Our vaunted Republican Attack Machine can't RAM into him without seeming, uh, insensitive. He's black, you know. Poor man. It's best to just ignore that condition, eh? And every other condition -- or do I mean position? Just hands off, is all. Hasn't the poor man suffered enough already? LEAVE BARACK ALONE!!!

Actually, no -- he hasn't suffered at all. His lineage owes nothing to the tradition of enslavement and racism that has polluted this nation. He is truly an African American, in the way that I am not a European American. He's African the way my son is Australian -- by birthright from an alien parent. Barack was raised by a white mother in foreign tropical lands. His minority status is purely one of melanin and statistics. Indeed, Obama is not African-American at all. He's Kenyan-American.

Yes, he can be attacked. We'll just attack his white half. You know, his unthinking Kennedistic liberalism. His paternalistic Ivy League theoretician Big Sister Marxist devotion to platitudes. Lefty stuff. Harmless, entirely harmless, because of its fine intentions. What kind of a racist monster attacks such a benign person? Well, me, for one. Except that I'd disagree with your hateful characterization of me as a "racist" "monster" who "attacks" a "benign" "person." Oh. Oops. I didn't mean to put "person" in quotes. That makes it seem like I meant to imply he wasn't a person. He's more than just a mere person -- he's a personage.

We'll attack him, when we start to, for his positions. For instance, he says he'd meet as president with Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Kim Jung Il. Face to face, that is. Sounds like a good idea. Sounds like a good idea. Isn't it funny that the same people who are okay with this are upset that he appeared at the same event where an anti-gay-marriage pastor spoke. Problem is, in his private life, or as a mere public figure, Obama bestows no special favor on those with whom he appears. As president he would represent all of us, and the holy radiance with which his presence would imbue these dicpotatoes would be blinding. Presidents are special, you see.

His Almanac of American Politics rating on Foreign Policy is 85% liberal -- not 100% liberal because of such odd positions as that he would invade Pakistan in order to attack al-Qaeda. "I will not hesitate," he orated, "to use military force to take out terrorists who pose a direct threat to America." I must be missing the nuance, that distinguishes this statement from Bush's so-hated policies of the past five years. But I'm being disingenuous. The hesitation wouldn't be in the attack, it would be in determining what a "direct threat" might possibly be.

He imagines that Iran can be handled by "sustained and aggressive diplomacy" along with "tough" sanctions. The UN would be a major factor in such efforts. Hm. NoKo springs to mind, as to how this is a really uninformed and ill-considered and anti-realistic and pseudo-good idea. You know, where we get lied to a lot and the dicpotato gets everything he wants. If I'm gonna get screwed, I want a vagina somehow involved. He uses words like "tough," yet he criticizes Hillary's vote to classify the Iranian Quds Force as a terrorist organization: it could enable Bush to launch military action against Iran, y'see.

He is for a published schedule of US withdrawal from Iraq. On January 30, 2007, he introduced the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 which called for capping the level of troops in Iraq at then-levels. In other words, he vigorously opposed the surge, which has worked to the point of reversing the problem. He called for "removing all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008" -- which is, like, uh, in a few weeks from now.

He has however called for a surge, or invasion, of two additional US brigades into Afghanistan. He claims there was "misreporting" of his comments to this effect, saying that "I never called for an invasion of Pakistan or Afghanistan." This seems to contradict his position, noted, that he would sent troops into Pakistan "even if the Pakistani government did not give approval..." You figure it out.

As for Israel, he supposes that "Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people." Project your mind briefly over the geopolitical landscape of our troubled globe, and puzzle to yourself as to whether this is a statement entirely in full consonance with reality. As an aid to your cogitations, I'll just remind you of Burma and the Horn of Africa. What say we first care about peoples who do not resort to terrorism? 'Nuff said.

Obama says he "will not support any bill that does not provide [an] earned path to citizenship for the undocumented population." No nationalist, he. Come one, come all. How very generous of him. As we must expect. He's for the "Dream Act" -- which I seem to think pays for college for illegals. The American Dream becomes the Illegal-American Dream. The We Are the World Dream. One earns a path to citizenship by applying for legal entry from outside the country. He's talking about providing a stolen path to citizenship for the forged-documented population.

The Almanac of American Politics rates him as 0% conservative on Economic Policy. He's for the death tax -- work hard, invest, save, so that most of your estate can go to the government rather than to your children. He is "absolutely determined" to get Nationalized Health Care -- turning 17% of the economy into a government monopoly. Thus, consistently, he is against school vouchers.

Opposed to exploring ANWR. Totally buys into anthropogenic Global Warming. What "we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return. ...we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe." He would cut "greenhouse gas emission" by 80% -- isn't that pre-Industrial Revolution levels? He'd be against burning buffalo chips.

As a state senator, the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council awarded him a 100% rating. They like him, they really like him. Same deal in the US Senate: 100% from the world's largest provider of abortion services, Planned Parenthood, and from the world's largest lobbyist group for abortion services, NARAL. He's all for partial-birth abortion. Against parental notification. He was one of the few state senators who voted against the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which requires medical care for aborted fetuses that survive the entirely legal and bioethical effort to medically terminate their metabolic activity. He supports embryonic stem cell research, and was co-sponsor of the 2005 Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. When Bush vetoed it, Obama said, "Conservative, pro-life Republicans want this bill to pass." Um, no?

He would sign the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. Being disabled doesn't give you special privileges. The world shouldn't have to conform to your needs anymore than you must conform to its. How is being disabled a handicap, if it's not a handicap? Yes, my reasoning is weak. But compassion is not a governmental function. Public facilities should accommodate the general population. Private facilities should operate according to the values of their owners. It's called the free market.

"I do not agree...that homosexuality is immoral." Neither do I. I do think that immoral conduct is immoral. He supposes the gay rights movement is "somewhat" like the civil rights movement. Yeah, the way sodomy is somewhat like sex. He's for including "sexual orientation" in anti-discrimination laws. Does that include necrophilia? (I almost wrote negrophilia. For reals.) He supports health benefits for gay civil partners. I don't know. If it's a contract, then why not? But I think we should be able to sell our kidneys. He has an 89% rating from the HRC -- "very pro-gay".

A 100% rating by the NAACP. Um, duh? Pro-affirmative-action. Double-duh. Them coloreds love that affirmative action. It's a requirement, to be authentic.

He has supported a national ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns. He voted against legislation protecting firearm manufacturers from liability. Voted against an exception for people charged with violating local weapons bans by using a gun in their home for self-defense. He's a board member of the Joyce Foundation, which funds and maintains several gun control organizations in the United States. He rates a grade of F from the NRA -- a "true enemy of gun owners’ rights". Guns aren't my thing, but we have to take sides, don't we.

Well, it goes on. Take a look for yourself. He's not an idiot. I agree with some of his positions, if not his reasoning, and if I don't agree, I'm neutral. Energy policy for example isn't about Global Warming!!! -- it's a matter of national security, and I don't care how in love someone is with their SUV. They should be taxed into oblivion, except for people who ACTUALLY NEED them. They are the pyramids of our civilization -- useless monumental tombs to vanity that will bankrupt our civilization. They might as well be giant statues facing the sea. We shouldn't have to fight wars over our opium addictions.

Politics is about compromise. It's tyranny that's about always getting your way. An Omaba presidency is highly unlikely to be more of a disaster than a Carter presidency, and we survived that, and it gave us a Reagan, who really was much better than you think. Presidents function on three levels -- rhetoric, small groups, and personal. Rhetoric is about speeches and public impressions -- what Bush sucks at. 

Obama is a genius at this. Small groups are where things get done -- twisting arms and doing deals. Johnson was a master at it. Bush is apparently impressive in intimate settings. The personal level is where mastery of issues, study, diligence, competence come into play. clinton and Carter over-managed the little things, which made them ineffective. Carter famously supervised the tennis court schedule of the White House. Where would Obama fit? He is vague, so very vague. We don't know.

In any case, we will survive. America is vast. Excess stimulates contraction. As William James once dreamed, everything is circular. But wisdom avoids a world of pain. For all that he may be elected, this is not Obama's time. If it is indeed "our" time, "our" does not include him. He is the wrong man.


J

Zombies and Fairy Tales

Someone asked me the other day who would I vote for if it came down to that -- Hillary or Obama. I didn’t even pause in answering. Hillary. Hm. How odd. Hillary, who is so disliked, over Obama, who is so charming and pleasant. How can such a thing be explained?

Isn’t it strange, though, such a karmic conflation, these clintons with Nixon. Hillary, who worked so industriously in the Nixon impeachment, and bill, who was actually impeached. bill, who had such a sleazy, such a shoddy character, counterpart to Nixon’s demon-haunted psyche. Hillary, who in her famously vindictive nature is such a complement to Nixon with his storied enemies list. How, in what way, could we possibly want even the possibility of a reprise of all that? clinton alone was precisely half the man Nixon was. If Hillary gets in, the resurrection would be complete -- if more zombie than holy.

How could such a thing be better than Obama? Because for all his appeal, Obama would be a disaster. America has never had a leftist president. Not left is we understand the term. We’ve had liberals in a moderate sense -- FDR, Johnson, Carter. But they weren’t ideologues. The real liberals, like McGovern and Mondale and Dukakis and Gore and Kerry -- never got elected. There’s a reason for that. Yes, providence -- but also because America is not the place for such leftists. Europe, of course, loves massive government. Russia. China. Leftist paradises. But the USA? Not yet. That’s Obama. The most liberal politician in the Senate.

Well, I'm wrong about Carter. Worst president ever. He must have been a liberal in the immoderate sense.

But we survived. As we will survive. Checks and balances. The Democrat-controlled Congress has not yet ruined the country. We can survive a few years in the wilderness. The problem with Obama is his inexperience. His naiveté. Can you imagine him sitting down at a negotiation table with Hugo Chavez? Good lord. Obama was a civil rights attorney. Yes, we do need civil rights attorneys. A few of them, because civil rights do need to be protected. Um, I shouldn’t have said “civil rights attorneys.” I should have said constitutional law attorneys. You know, based in reality, rather than leftist propaganda.

How liberal is Obama? While he was in the Illinois legislature, a bill came up to provide medical aid to babies who survived abortion. You know, actual babies, just maybe sort of cut up. Obama voted against the bill. Let them die, I guess. Very, very, very liberal. I don’t hold it against him. It’s just emblematic. And as Hillary so shrilly pointed out, Obama holds the record for Senate votes of abstain, or merely present. Not real strong on taking a clear position, huh? This may make him a nice guy, but not much of a leader.

As for his oratory, if you analyze it, he says exactly nothing. No real plans, no concrete propositions -- just high-flown rhetoric. Universal health care and mortgage-crisis relief. Doesn’t that sound nice? But how will it be paid for, with this oh-so-out-of-control budget already causing so many problems? He’s not wrong to be so vague -- his plans would be used against him in the general election. It’s a tactic, his vagueness. But it also seems to be a character trait. Is it a sort of middle-child thing? -- the mediator and conciliator? Manifesting in him through his genetic middle ground between two races? Nonsense, of course. Because he isn’t moderate in his positions. He’s an extreme liberal.

Government is not the answer. It isn’t the problem, either, pace Reagan. It is a tool, to be used or misused according to who wields it. As James Barber says in his The Presidential Character, “government is no church. Democracy is a system, a set of conditions, a down-to-earth skeleton put together to host and foster baseline virtues such as justice, freedom, equality, community, and participation, rather than topline virtues such as faith, hope and charity. So who ought to be picked for the Presidency is a concern we ought to think about not in the context of moral perfection but in the context of basic political leadership in the reality of democracy.”

Conservatives should know this, having, as so many of them do, an actual church, that they need not look to government for salvation. Government is a necessary evil, designed to inhibit unnecessary evils such as crime, and to undo inevitable evils, such as floods. Of these two, Hillary or Obama, which would be the less ineffective in dealing with such issues? I’d chose Nixonian vindictiveness over Carteresque fecklessness every time.

Hopefully it won’t come to that. McCain can beat Hillary because Hillary will get out the hate vote against her. He can beat Obama because Hispanics and Asians, historically, do not vote for a black man. Don’t ask me. Blacks will show up in record numbers, but moderates and independents will go for McCain, and when conservatives find out the specifics of how very very left Obama actually is, they’ll hold their noses and vote for McCain.

So? It’s a good thing. We win. We win by not losing.


J

Ma Jolie

I’ve carried the terrible secret for years. Finally I’ve found the courage to tell it. Perhaps it’s not courage. Maybe I’m just too tired to bear the burden alone. I just know I can’t go on like this anymore. And now that he's come back into my life, in a way, it's unbearable.

It happened more than 25 years ago. I was driving cross country on some business -- the details hardly matter. Outside Collinsville, Illinois I picked up a hitchhiker, a tall young black man with caramel skin and a dazzling smile. We spoke of many things. He seemed to know my soul. I felt an instant friendship growing in me, as between old friends. When it grew dark I invited him to share my motel room.

Big mistake.

It started with his complaining of a backache. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll just say that he insisted. I didn’t want to. It just got out of hand. What was supposed to be therapeutic became sensual. Don’t ask me how it happened. He just seemed to control me. That voice, that driving, compelling voice. Ugh. I feel so dirty, still. I can hardly say it. Yes. With release. But that’s not the worst of it.

He took out a can from his knapsack, and before I knew what was happening he was dangling smoked herring from his toes and making me bark like a seal. I felt so degraded. He called me his tee jolie blond and told me he’d eat me up like graton. I feel so dirty.

It goes on. I can’t bear to speak of it. I snuck my keys out of his shoe and crept out of the motel room while he was showering. I felt lucky to be alive.

And that’s why I will never, ever vote for Barack H. Obama.

Sometimes I wake up in the night in a cold sweat. Sometimes I can’t fall asleep at all. But sometimes, when the wind shifts and I catch the wild scent of the teeming ocean in the air, I can’t help but feel the touch of strong long fingers in the breeze that tousles my hair.


J